Broadway Comedies: The Royal Family / Animal Crackers / June Moon / Once in a Lifetime / of Thee I Sing / You Can't Take It with You / Dinner at Eight / Stage Door / The Man Who Came to Dinner

by George S. Kaufman, Laurence Maslon (Editor)

If Eugene O'Neill represents the tragic mask of American drama, then George S. Kaufman can easily lay claim to its smiling counterpart. No other comic dramatist in America has enjoyed more popular success or been more fortunate in his choice of collaborators, which included George and Ira Gershwin, Moss Hart, Irving Berlin, and the Marx Brothers. Here, in the most comprehensive collection of Kaufman's plays ever assembled, are nine plays: his "backstage" play The Royal Family (1927, written w Edna Ferber); the Marx Brothers-inspired mayhem of Animal Crackers (1928, with Morrie Ryskind), in a version discovered in Groucho Marx's papers and published here for the first time; June Moon (1929, with Ring Lardner), a look at a young composer trying to make it big on Tin Pan Alley; Once in a Lifetime (1930, with Moss Hart), one of the first satires of Hollywood; Pulitzer Prize winners Of Thee I Sing (1931, with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin) and You Can't Take It with You (1936, w Moss Hart); Dinner at Eight (1932, w Edna Ferber), a ensemble piece that mixes comedy and melodrama; Stage Door (1936, w Edna Ferber), his story about young actresses trying to make it in NYC; and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939, w Moss Hart), a burlesque of America's cult of celebrity. These plays are reminders of Broadway in its glory days.

Genres: Plays, Humor, Fiction, Anthologies

911 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

People note American playwright George Simon Kaufman for many collaborations, including Dinner at Eight (1932) with Edna Ferber and You Can't Take It with You (1936) with Moss Hart.

This theatre director, theatre producer, humorist, and drama critic, known as "the great collaborator," wrote very few plays alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would never have picked this up if not for the Read Harder 2016 challenge - and it was hilarious. I read "You Can't Take It With You," by Kaufman and Moss Hart, a kooky-family farce. Kaufman and Hart also wrote "Animal Crackers," as in the Marx Brothers, which gives you an idea of the tone here. I didn't read any of the other plays, because I find standard prose more engaging, but if I had a chance to see any of Kaufman's plays performed I would be thrilled.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Animal Crackers (****) -- This is an hilarious play (that the movie very closely follows). While reading it, though, I could easily visualize the Marx Brothers doing their bit. However, I think some of the Marx Brothers' set gags actually diminished what could have been an even better comedy. But you can't say the Marx Brothers held back any jokes -- no pun was too low to sink to. One note on this version: It uses a script owned by Groucho Marx, but leaves out important -- and I mean critically important -- plot details that explain what's going on. These scenes are included in the notes section, but I didn't read them until I finished the play. Very odd. (5/11)

Of Thee I Sing (**) -- This is a humorous satire on politicians, but its satire ends up being very cynical by the end. Don't look for a positive role model in any characters of this play. They are all crooks. As a result, the play seems to bring out a cynical, passive, "what are you gonna do" attitude that I don't like. I guess it's a good play for our times. (5/11)

[Rolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like old movie comedies full of sassy broads and stinging wisecracks this is the book for you. Kaufman practically kept Broadway laughing from the 20's to the mid forties.

[Yaroslav · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Royal Family ***
Animal Crackers ****
June Moon **
Once In a Lifetime **
Of Thee I Sing ***
Dinner at Eight *
Stage Door **
You Can't Take It With You ***
The Man Who Came To Dinner ***

[Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to account for my lukewarm reaction to this collection. Often I have trouble appreciating humor in book form - I register that a passage is supposed objectively to be funny, and it may strike me as mildly droll, but it doesn't make me chuckle, let alone laugh. Yet, if I hear the same book read aloud - necessarily slower - it seems funnier. But, beyond the limitations on my own sense of humor, this collection of Broadway comedies, hits in their time (1927 through 1939), all co-authored by George Kaufman, seem to me not to have aged very well.

The first, Animal Crackers, was made into a madcap Marx brothers film - and even without a clear memory of the film, it's hard to read without immediately fitting each of the Marx brothers into their assigned roles. But so much of the rapid-fire dialogue, to the extent it involves women, consists of what would today be considered sexual harassment and abuse. June Moon is more tolerable, but left me with the sense that none of the characters who received a happy ending really deserved it - although they deserved it more than the characters who didn't. Once in a Lifetime offers a fantasy of a decent but dim guy who succeeds, over and over again, by sheer dumb luck. He's incapable of maturation as a character, and so the main question is, can it last? - which is really a way of asking, when the hero is a fool, as we all have to feel we are now and then, can we hope for a merciful universe to still bring him (or ourselves) out on top? - It is set mostly in an amusingly venal and self-absorbed Hollywood, the better to provide contrast with the witless but down to earth hero.

I'll have to add on to this review as I periodically return to read the rest of the plays one by one.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

SPAULDING: Say, I used to know a fellow that looked exactly like you by the name of Emanuel Ravelli. Are you his brother?

RAVELLI: I am Emanuel Ravelli.

SPAULDING: You're Emanuel Ravelli?

RAVELLI: I am Emanuel Ravelli.

SPAULDING: Well, no wonder you look like him. But I will still insist there is a resemblance.

RAVELLI: He thinks I look alike.

MRS. RITTENHOUSE: You are one of the musicians? But you were not due until tomorrow.

RAVELLI: We couldn't come tomorrow. It was too quick.

SPAULDING: Say, you're lucky they didn't come yesterday.

RAVELLI: We were busy yesterday, but we charge you just the same.

SPAULDING: This is better than exploring. What do you fellows get an hour?

RAVELLI: For playing we get ten dollars an hour.

SPAULDING: I see. What do you get for not playing?

RAVELLI: Twelve dollars an hour.

SPAULDING: Well, cut me off a piece of that, will you?

RAVELLI: Now, for rehearsing we make a special rate, fifteen dollars an hour.

SPAULDING: That's for rehearsing? What do you get for not rehearsing?

RAVELLI: You couldn't afford it. You see if we don't rehearse we don't play, and if we don't play that runs into money.

SPAULDING: How much do you want to run into an open man-hole?

RAVELLI: Just the cover charge.

SPAULDING: Well, if you're ever in the neighborhood, drop in.

RAVELLI: Sewer. Looks like he's got me in a hole. Now let's see how we stand--

SPAULDING: Flat-footed.

[Brian Hutzell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are nine fine plays representing Broadway as it was in the 1930s-40s. Kaufman’s specialty as a playwright was writing plays about playwrights and plays. There are some classics here (The Royal Family, You Can’t Take It With You), but not all of these have aged well. And let’s face it, it’s much better to see and hear crazy musicals like Animal Crackers and Of Thee I sing than it is to read them. The former especially suffers; the antics of the Marx Brothers just don’t translate well onto the printed page.

Of the remainder: June Moon is pleasant but inconsequential fluff; Dinner at Eight and Stage Door are lovely and more serious; while The Man Who Came to Dinner is too annoying in every way to be funny. (Speaking of funny, throughout all of these plays, some of the funniest lines come in the stage directions!)

My favorite here is Once in a Lifetime, which hilariously paints a picture of Hollywood as it made the rough transition from the Silents to the Talkies. This 1930 play had to be the inspiration for the 1952 movie musical Singin’ in the Rain.

Overall, a great collection, and up to the Library of America’s usual high standards.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't very familiar with George Kaufman, but upon reading this selection of his plays, I realized he's the real wit behind the quote often attributed to Groucho Marx: "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."

These plays ranged from downright slapstick (Animal Crackers) to dramedy (Dinner at Eight/Stage Door) to full on musical political farce (Of Thee I Sing). Many of them focused on characters in the entertainment industry. The Royal Family followed a family of actors, June Moon is about a fledgling composer, Once in a Lifetime tells the story of a vaudeville trio who decides to open up a sham elocution school in Hollywood to make it rich off the advent of the talkies and accidentally ends up taking over a movie studio, Stage Door is about a boarding house for young actresses and The Man Who Came To Dinner is about a witty radio host and his bevy of celebrity friends invading a small Ohio town. Every single play was smart, well written and most importantly entertaining.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and usually entertaining plays, but half of them were not what I would call comedies - witty, yes, funny - no. My favorite is You Can't Take it With You, about a very loveable and wacky family with one daughter who is normal. My all-time favorite line is when the mother, who writes plays but never does anything with them, has her heroine enter a monastery (on visitors' day but she never leaves) and then doesn't know what to write next, comments, "You know, with forty monks and one girl, something ought to happen."

[Ward Lehmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The script of Animal Crackers was found in Groucho’s papers in the Library of Congress. How cool is that? It’s helpful that they have alternate lines in the Notes from the opening night version from 4 months earlier, showing how the play changed with Groucho’s ad libs, etc.

[Alan Teasley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read parts or all of "Animal Crackers" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner."

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dinner at Eight- 5 stars

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Royal Family - finished 01.23.20

Animal Crackers - finished 01.04.21

June Moon - finished 01.09.22

Once in a Lifetime - finished 01.19.23

Of Thee I Sing - finished 01.10.24

Dinner at Eight - finished 01.12.25

Stage Door - finished 01.14.26